“For five years,” Hazel confirmed.
Every few months, they sent another letter to the shop.
They explained that the watch had belonged to their grandfather.
They described the engraving, the scratch near the crown, and the reason their father had sold it.
Most letters received no reply.
One was returned unopened.
Another came back with a short note saying the collector was not interested in selling.
The girls kept saving anyway.
They believed that eventually they would get another chance.
Last autumn, the shop owner called Iris.
The collector was downsizing.
He had brought several watches back to the store, including one engraved to a man named Daniel.
He was willing to consider an offer.
Iris had answered the call while I was working my evening shift.
Hazel had been in the middle of a therapy exercise when Iris rolled into the room holding the phone against her chest.
They had enough money to make an offer, but only barely.
The collector wanted more.
For three months, they accepted every art request they could reasonably finish.
Hazel painted until the muscles in her hands cramped.
Iris organized orders, packed prints, and negotiated prices.
Their therapist noticed the exhaustion and demanded an explanation.
The girls made her promise not to tell me.
She agreed only after reviewing their schedule and limiting the hours they could work.
“She was part of this?” I asked.
Hazel nodded.
“She made sure we didn’t hurt ourselves.”
The realization explained several things I had dismissed: private conversations that ended when I entered the therapy room, folders tucked quickly into bags, and the way both girls had seemed unusually tired before their first steps.
They had not only been fighting to stand.
They had been racing a deadline.
The collector planned to leave town in June.
If they could not meet his price before then, the watch would be sent to an auction house.
In April, the girls finally reached the amount he had requested.
They arranged to meet him at the pawnshop with their therapist present.
He was an older man who had owned the watch for nearly a decade.
He told them it had always been one of his favorites because of the engraving.
When Hazel and Iris explained what their father had done, the collector removed the watch from its display case and studied the message on the back.
Then he asked a question.
“Does your father know you’re here?”
They told him no.
According to Iris, he looked at their wheelchairs, then at the stack of carefully saved money on the counter.
He pushed part of it back.
“He said Grandpa would probably want us to keep some,” Hazel said.
The collector accepted less than his original price.
The shop owner replaced the damaged strap without charging them and found the old velvet box in storage.
The girls brought the watch home and hid it behind a loose panel beneath Iris’s desk.
They had owned it for six weeks.
Six weeks in which I had cleaned that room, folded laundry beside that desk, and never suspected anything.
I turned the watch over in my hand again.
The second hand moved with a steady, quiet rhythm.
“You should have used the money for yourselves,” I said.
I heard the sharpness in my voice and hated it, but fear was rising beneath my ribs.
For twelve years, every choice I made had been about protecting them.
The idea that they had denied themselves anything because of me felt unbearable.
Hazel’s expression changed.
“Dad, stop.”
I looked at her.
